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before my daughters started kindergarten they only knew how to speak in Cantonese, then by the time they reach 2nd grade they only knew how to speak in English. i wish they can speak in both languages.
Dancing Fire|1345658751|3255412 said:before my daughters started kindergarten they only knew how to speak in Cantonese, then by the time they reach 2nd grade they only knew how to speak in English. i wish they can speak in both languages.
AGBF|1345689834|3255745 said:So the best I could do-given that I am not a native speaker of any language except English-was expose her early to a native speaker of another foreign language. Since I speak French, I started to take her to the home of a Belgian friend when she was four months old and while we were there we spoke only French. At least this gave her early exposure to another language, spoken by a native speaker of that language.
AGBF
well,before they started school we only spoke in Cantonese and when their grandparents baby sit they must communicate in Chinese since they do not speak any English,then when they started kindergarten we started to communicate in English at home, so i guess it is our fault for them not being bilingual.Deia|1345717139|3255812 said:Dancing Fire|1345658751|3255412 said:before my daughters started kindergarten they only knew how to speak in Cantonese, then by the time they reach 2nd grade they only knew how to speak in English. i wish they can speak in both languages.
DF, is this because you didn't speak Cantonese with them at home?
very little now.artdecogirl|1345738497|3255953 said:My children are not at all other then the high school french and german they all took. I wonder DF if your children may not speak cantonese but can they understand it still?
madelise|1345737641|3255943 said:AGBF|1345689834|3255745 said:So the best I could do-given that I am not a native speaker of any language except English-was expose her early to a native speaker of another foreign language. Since I speak French, I started to take her to the home of a Belgian friend when she was four months old and while we were there we spoke only French. At least this gave her early exposure to another language, spoken by a native speaker of that language.
Did that work, AGBF? Did she pick up French?
natascha|1346104064|3258112 said:As a former bilingual kid (or in my case trilingual) you don't really mix up words as you get older. You might forget one word for a moment in a certain language and know it in others but monolingual people momentarily forget words too.
However it has been in my experience that simultaneous bilingual people (as in not just fully fluent in another language) don't always realize what language they are speaking, reading in etc. This can lead to funny situations. Eg if I am writing in one language and someone speaks to me in an other I will often start writing in the language that I am having the conversation in without noticing. I once didn't double check before handing in an assignment and the teacher made me rewrite it since half of the text was in a language that she did not understand . Or if speaking to someone else is simultaneous bilingual, then a conversation will often change language if a word is used from a different language (like a place, food, name, etc) and can quite often fluidly move between several languages without it being noticed, only being discovered when someone else points it out. Of course you sometimes make funny comments like why do they have several copy's of the menu, not realizing that they are in several languages (to my defense I was really tired and hungry and just wanted to get to the right part of the menu).
natascha|1346104064|3258112 said:However it has been in my experience that simultaneous bilingual people (as in not just fully fluent in another language) don't always realize what language they are speaking, reading in etc. This can lead to funny situations. Eg if I am writing in one language and someone speaks to me in an other I will often start writing in the language that I am having the conversation in without noticing.